"Dictated" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his villages a torn battle ground of two contending armies, while the one had forced itself upon him, requisitioned his shaggy pony, burned the roof over his head, and did whatever military necessity dictated. It was small concern to Ivan whether the Allies or the Bolsheviks won this strange war. He did not know what it was all about, and in that he was like the rest of us. But he asked only to be left alone, in peace to lead his simple life, gathering his scanty crops in the hot brief ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... He dictated this letter aloud, in a firm tone, and in jerks. At the moment when he finished it, the door opened and gave passage to a new personage, who precipitated himself into the chamber, crying ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... Inflamed by the contemplation of these lofty objects, he had them incessantly present to his mind. His heart, made hot within him by the idea of the future happiness of the human race, and by the honour of contributing to it, dictated to him a language worthy of so high an enterprise ... and for a moment, he astonished Europe by productions in which vulgar souls saw only eloquence and brightness of understanding, but in which ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... patched pants, Dick felt ashamed of them. He was unwilling to appear in the streets with them. Yet, if he went to work in his new suit, he was in danger of spoiling it, and he might not have it in his power to purchase a new one. Economy dictated a return to the old garments. Dick tried them on, and surveyed himself in the cracked glass; but the ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... and of Peggy and her husband; the adventure of the lake; and the protection we found from his skill, strength, and courage at Deal; not forgetting the attendant incidents of each, nor neglecting to give such brief but strong touches as feeling dictated.] ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... He then dictated two dispatches, one to Governor Harris and one to General Breckenridge, telling them to conceal the death of Johnson, and bidding me not to speak of it to any one. So far as the report of his death was circulated the officers denied it, some affirming ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... battles to scientific combinations, while the duke, having studied and practised his art in the great Spanish and Italian schools of warfare, was rather a profound strategist than a professional fighter, although capable of great promptness and intense personal energy when his judgment dictated a battle. Both were born with that invaluable gift which no human being can acquire, authority, and both were adored and willingly obeyed by their soldiers, so long as those soldiers were paid ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... system of Christian Theology. It was a wonderful though a highly artificial structure, composed of fine old crusted dogmas which no one could prove, but very few dared to dispute. There was the "magnified man" in the sky, the Infallible Bible, dictated by the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, the Fall, the Atonement, Predestination and Grace, Justification by Faith, a Chosen People, a practically omnipotent Devil, myriads of Evil Spirits, an eternity of bliss to be obtained for nothing, ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... also sat down. I was then asked, How long I intended to stay? On my saying, Five days, Taipa was ordered to come and sit by me, and proclaim this to the people. He then harangued them, in a speech mostly dictated by Feenou. The purport of it, as I learnt from Omai, was, that they were all, both old and young, to look upon me as a friend, who intended to remain with them a few days; that, during my stay, they must not steal any thing, nor molest me any other ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... used chiefly as a manual, to supply information that would otherwise need to be dictated by the instructor. The Outlines are in many particulars merely suggestive. Many topics are simply mentioned, which the teacher must elaborate ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... disfigured by decay, a deformity increased and rendered more hideous by its contrast with the splendour of the vestments which cover the body, and by the pale ghastly light that gleams from the aperture above. The inscription over this chapel or mausoleum, was dictated by St. Charles himself, and breathes that modesty and piety which so peculiarly marked his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... man stalking a deer, he followed the couple, and tried to judge, by the expression of his wife's face, how things were going. Things were going very well. Mrs. Little had, in common with all weak and obstinate persons, a very foolish fear of ever being supposed to be dictated to or controlled by anybody. She was distinctly aware that Hetty had checkmated her. She had strong suspicions that there might be others looking on who understood the game; and the only subterfuge ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... entirely changed. He then commanded six-and-thirty of the lads, to read the several lines softly, as they appeared upon the frame; and where they found three or four words together that might make part of a sentence, they dictated to the four remaining boys, who were scribes. This work was repeated three or four times, and at every turn, the engine was so contrived, that the words shifted into new places, as the square bits of ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... designing—O the perplexities of these cruel doubtings!—To be sure, if he be false, as I may call it, I have gone too far, much too far!—I am ready, on the apprehension of this, to bite my forward tongue (or rather to beat my more forward heart, that dictated to that poor machine) for what I have said. But sure, at least, he must be sincere for the time!—He could not be such a practised dissembler!—If he could, O how desperately wicked is the heart of man!—And where could he learn all these barbarous arts?—If so, it must be native surely ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... certain additional facts: The "time" of such internal tunes is usually dictated by some rhythmical subconscious occurrence. After hearty meals it is always the time of the heart beat, unless there be "in the air" some more impressive stimulus; as, for example, when on shipboard, the beat is with me ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... direction of Mrs. Haddo's private sitting-room. That good lady was busy over some work which she generally managed to accomplish at that special hour. She was seated at her desk, putting her signature to several notes and letters which she had dictated early that morning to her secretary. She looked up as Betty and ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... letter, dictated to his nurse-secretary, had, according to Archie, been full of good things. Cross-examination of the proud father, however, had failed to reveal anything more stirring than "I ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... silken curtains close; for I had been anxious hitherto to keep them open, so that I might see the pale moon mounting the skies, as I used to see her—the same moon—rise from behind the Kaiser Stuhl at Heidelberg; but the sight made me cry, so Amante shut it out. She dictated to me as a nurse ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... that the course of any germ's development was dictated by the habits of the germs from which it was descended and of whose identity it had once formed part. If a germ found itself placed as the germs in the line of its ancestry were placed, it would do as its ancestors had done, and grow up into the same ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... West, Brooklyn, Mawruss, for all the spare time it gave the fellers which framed it to indulge in any wild night life. Take, for instance, the proposed constitution and by-laws, which was printed on three pages of the newspaper the other day, Mawruss, and anybody which dictated that megillah to a stenographer would be too hoarse for weeks afterwards to order so much as a plain Benedictine. Also, Mawruss, nobody which didn't lead a blameless life could have a brain clear enough to understand the thing, let alone composing ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... Congregationalist by prenatal influence. And I need not here explain that the love of freedom found form in Congregationalism, a religious denomination without a pope and without a bishop, where one congregation was never dictated to nor ruled by any other. Each congregation was complete in itself—or was supposed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... society, but the necessities of society itself led to the a posteriori formulation of laws. Theoretic science subsequently explained these laws, and perfected their form and organism, infusing into them a nobler purpose; but it was the necessities of nature which first dictated the balance, system, and harmony of the alliances and associations of materials and phenomena as they now exist, which rendered possible the first nucleus of human society, and which, in course of time, brought the component parts into definite relations ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... Count Pietro of Savoy, June 14, 1262. He was buried in Tewkesbury Abbey. Richard stood foremost of the English nobles in the wars of the Barons against Henry the Third, and with his own hand forced the King to swear to the terms they dictated, in 1259, as is stated in the ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... whom my brother had been taught to entertain the highest expectations. The exploits of Zisca, the Bohemian hero, were woven into a dramatic series and connection. According to German custom, it was minute and diffuse, and dictated by an adventurous and lawless fancy. It was a chain of audacious acts and unheard-of disasters. The moated fortress and the thicket, the ambush and the battle, and the conflict of headlong passions, were portrayed in wild numbers and with terrific energy. An afternoon was set apart ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... suddenly shrunk back through the crowd and left the room. We shall not follow him. We had rather follow our old friend the harper. No sooner had he received the prize of ten guineas, than he went to a small room belonging to the people of the house, asked for pen, ink, and paper, and dictated, in a low voice to his boy, a letter, which he ordered him to put at once into the post-office. The boy ran off with the letter and was but just in time, for the postman's horn was sounding. The next ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... had been an interesting study while he wrote her sentences. Now he gravely set the pen where she indicated, and Elnora dictated— ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... which he considered must have been cruelly harrowed by all she had lately suffered. Just now, there was no room in her world for the more delicate susceptibilities of emotion. She wholly misjudged him, and the more she thought of it, the more she believed that his letter was dictated by pity rather than love. This pity irked her pride and made her disinclined to ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... more," said Lady Fanny, "I made Grandmamma go into Fr—into Lord Tiptoff's rooms, and dictated out of my own mouth the letter which he wrote, and pinned up the haunch of venison that his hideous old housekeeper brought us—I am quite jealous of her—I pinned up the haunch of venison in a copy of ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fathers of his country, was this the fact? Was he not insulted?—was not the nation insulted under his administration? How came the posts to be detained after the definitive treaty with Great Britain? What dictated that inhuman deed to stir up horror and destruction among us—Lord Dorchester's insolent and savage speech to the hordes of Indians on our frontiers to massacre our inhabitants without distinction? Were those not insults? Or have we tamely forgotten them? Yet, sir, did Washington ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... the highest summits of the Alps, the astonishment was general. Some imagined that it was a mere whim which would be fully satisfied by the noise it caused. Others exclaimed against a hardihood willing to encounter so many perils. None were inclined to regard my words as dictated by an intimate conviction. None could accustom themselves to the idea of so extraordinary a scheme. The excitement was redoubled at the departure of the different telegraphic despatches summoning from ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... is not dictated by malice or inspired by the natural chagrin which animates a man of spirit when he reflects upon the undeserved humiliation which he has endured from her who was once dearer to him than life itself. Mine is a nature susceptible and sensitive, yet, I ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... conquering heroes. Our most successful books and periodicals would pollute a Parisian sewer or disgrace a Portuguese bagnio. The suffrages of the people are bought and sold like sheep. The national policy is dictated by Dives. Men are sent to Congress whom God intended for the gallows, while those he ticketed for the penitentiary spout inanities in fashionable pulpits. The merchant who pays his debts in full when he might settle for ten cents ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... tell, Captain Drake had never once contemplated any attack on San Joseph; he valued the place at less than a scratch on an Englishman's skin. His stay in the harbour was dictated solely by a desire to glean information concerning the Orinoco and the land of gold that he sought. The delta of the great river lay, the nearest land, to the south of the island; the natives professed to know much of the river and the tribes dwelling on its banks, and ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... Maximilian that the decree was drafted and amended by Marshal Bazaine, who urged its enactment. In the memorandum drawn up for his lawyers, and published by Dr. Basch in "Erinnerungen aus Mexico," Maximilian, says: "Bazaine dictated himself the ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... the younger man grappled the captain and threw him into his bunk. The captain struggled and glared like a tiger; Fred gasped between the special efforts dictated by self-preservation: ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... to sit and hear her blunder through a chapter; but, when that was finished, the kind aunt tried at some little explanation; after which she set her to write in a copy-book. Mrs. Goodriche dictated what she was to write: it was generally something of what she had herself said about the chapter; but what with blots, and bad spelling, and crooked lines, poor Bessy's book was not fit to ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... is serene and cheerful. His chief care is to impress upon me the fact that in making war the Bulgarians had not been influenced by dynastic considerations nor by military ambition. It was a war dictated not by a Court circle or a military clique, but by the irresistible ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... of wandering adventurers, had a thousand times more assurance than he. In her secret heart she had no regard for any social law; society was a tool to be used, not a weight under which one struggled helplessly. She dictated where he followed precedent; she laughed where he was filled with apprehension. Seriously, she set her wits and her love to the task of accustoming him to joy, and day by day he flung off the old, half- defined reluctances ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... spread far and wide among the hostile Indian tribes, and the fiercest chiefs dreaded it like a tempest. Some made submission, and others joined in signing a treaty of peace which Jackson dictated to them with terms as harsh as the temper of the man who ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... seven years ago. Now he seemed to Martie only an unreasonable, unattractive old man, thwarted in his old age in everything his heart desired. Lydia was still tremblingly filial in her attitude toward Pa, but Martie at once assumed the maternal. She scolded him, listened to him, and dictated to him, and he liked it. Martie had never loved him as Lydia did; she had defied and disobeyed and deserted him, yet he transferred his allegiance to her now, and clung to ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... rights of himself and his brother. One of the most salient peculiarities of the corsairs at this time was the apparent recklessness with which they assailed others who were participants in their nefarious business. Self-interest and policy would seem, to the observer in the present day, to have dictated quite a different course of action; but we shall see, when we come to deal with the life-history of Kheyr-ed-Din, that this infinitely wiser and more intellectual man apparently allowed himself to be swayed by gusts of passion, in which he savagely maltreated those with whom he was associated, ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... you wish me also, my dear sir, to speak—being born in a Christian country, he makes profession of the Catholic religion, and so far there is nothing peculiar about him. But in the search for a system of morals dictated by reason without the light of faith, he has to lay down his principles on this supposition, and to consider man apart from revelation. He conceives things in such a universal uncertainty that doubt itself is seized ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... by the news her little Angelique brought her, that now since she was freed of her wearing secret, her health would begin to return. And in time it did, and long after, when her tongue could again frame its words, she dictated such a letter of contrition and remorse to Mrs. Breaux, that that gentle heart's last feelings against her were forgotten. In this letter, too, the poor girl related the happenings of the afternoon when ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... in such a state, are you going to put a creature of God to death?' and he got me released. Upon which, these two brothers went again to the magistrate, and urged him to put me to death. As this official had already taken a bribe from them, he [readily] acquiesced to do whatever they dictated. ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... reputation in the world, lest, after the publication of their books, it should be supposed they had grafted their talents upon mine. Yet as Madam Dupin always supposed those I had to be very moderate, and never employed me except it was to write what she dictated, or in researches of pure erudition, the reproach, with respect to her, would have ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... enveloped; I answered, "One hundred and fifty pounds." He immediately broke the seal, examined the bill, and found that it was correct. "Now, Sir," he continued, "sit down, and write from my dictation." He dictated from the letter which he had opened, and when I had finished the copy, compared it next with the original characters, expressed his satisfaction at their identity, and returning the letters, licensed my departure, when and to where I list, observing, that I was fortunate in having had ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... many persuasions, prevailed upon them, by telling them that it was nothing but what, if they were in the negroes' condition, they would do if they could; and that the negroes had really the highest injustice done them, to be sold for slaves without their consent; and that the law of nature dictated it to them; that they ought not to kill them, and that it would be wilful murder to ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... the magnanimity of Ucita. He regarded the message as one of the stratagems of war, dictated either by fear or cowardice. He therefore ordered the trumpets to sound the advance, his only fear being, that the chief might escape. Porcallo, a Quixotic knight, had no element of timidity in his character. He led his troops. He never said "Go," but "Follow." Pressing ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... of horses and beasts of burden is manifested in an astonishing manner. Thus the mountaineers are heard to say, "I will not give you the mule whose step is the easiest, but the one which is most intelligent (la mas racional)." This popular expression, dictated by long experience, bears stronger evidence against the theory of animated machines, than all ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... the new issues which were clamorous for attention, and the public discontent was reflected in abrupt changes of political support. There was a general feeling of distrust regarding the character and capacity of the politicians at Washington, and election results were apparently dictated more by fear than by hope. One party would be raised up and the other party cast down, not because the one was trusted more than the other, but because it was for a while less odious. Thus a party success might well be a prelude to a party disaster because neither ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... morning dictated articles for the Novoe Vremya, Matin and Corriere della Sera, emphasizing the need of co-operative cosmopolitan co-ordination. Flew to Chicago to deliver supplementary lecture to that given by ARTHUR BALFOUR on ARISTOTLE. Took for my subject "Aerial Trade Routes, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... harbour any grudge against lobsters as a class, but because I object to being dictated to by a buccaneer with flat feet, who wears a soiled dickey instead of a shirt, and who is only waiting for a chance to overcharge me or short-change me, or give me bad money, or something. If every other form of provender had failed them the populace of Paris ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... society, the want of proper instruction, the ill effect of bad example, the advice of the prejudiced, the association with the low-bred, and a hundred other causes, may conspire to prevent that intimacy with the cardinal rules of good behavior, which decorum and good breeding have dictated for the better guidance of the community. It is for such persons, and for the many others who, though not unacquainted with the principles which should guide them in their conduct, are yet often at fault upon questions ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... an honest man! I hope you will yourself say that to the Prince.'" [Footnote: Lord Melbourne and Baron Stockmar were always on excellent terms. At the same time the English Prime Minister was not without a little jealousy of any suspicion of his Government being dictated to by ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... Information is brought of the approach of Montcalm, with a hostile army of Indians and Frenchmen, from the North; and the young ladies are straightway hurried off to the more advanced, and consequently more dangerous post, when prudence and affection would have dictated just the opposite course. Nor is this all. General Webb, the commander of Fort Edward, at the urgent request of Colonel Munro, sends him a reinforcement of fifteen hundred men, who march off through the woods, by the military road, with drums beating and colors flying; and yet, strange to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... expressed and perpetuated by the touching symbol of taking fire from the Prytaneum of the native city. A renowned diviner, named Lampon [305], whose sacred pretensions did not preserve him from the ridicule of the comic poets [306], accompanied the emigrants (B. C. 440), and an oracle dictated the site of the new colony near the ancient city, and by the fountain of Thurium. The Sybarites, with the common vanity of men whose ancestors have been greater than themselves, increased their pretensions in proportion as they lost their power; they affected superiority ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... away, but returned in a short time, and the mate handed a note over the rail. It was a curt statement, dictated and typewritten, that Mr. Marston wished to see Captain Mayo on business connected with the Conomo, and that if Captain Mayo were not able to transact that business Mr. Marston would be obliged to hunt up some ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... because you cannot promise to keep my secret," he answered calmly. He knew her very well, and he believed that she would not break such an oath as he had dictated, under any circumstances. He did not choose to risk anything by her indiscretion. Donna Tullia hesitated, seeing that he was firm. She was tortured ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... let us look for a moment at the method by which that book was produced. You walked up and down this room with your hands behind your back, and dictated chapter after chapter, and I sat at this table taking it all down in shorthand. Then you went out and took the air while I industriously whacked it out ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... Gaveston's hands as a prisoner, and at the same time confiscated his estates and gave them to Gaveston. Gaveston sent the bishop about from castle to castle as a prisoner, according as his caprice or fancy dictated. ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... shown, she had drunk to the dregs the bitter cup of her sad love; unless I wished to see her die, I must give her repose. She had often addressed cruel reproaches to me, and had, perhaps, on certain other occasions shown more anger than in this scene; but what she had said this time was not dictated by offended pride; it was the truth, which, hidden closely in her heart, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the houseboat. The men cooked themselves something to eat and Baxter and Flapp did the same. It must be confessed that Flapp did not like the newcomers and hated to have anything to do with them. But he was too much of a coward to speak up, and so did as Baxter dictated. Thus is one rascal held under the thumb of another. It was only when Lew Flapp was among those who were smaller and weaker than himself that he dared to play the ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield
... of style in an age when the greatest stylists were but bunglers and beginners, than valuable histories. The Italians of the fifteenth century, striving to rival Cicero and Livy, succeeded only in becoming lifeless shadows of the past. History dictated under the inspiration of pedantic scholarship, and with the object of reproducing an obsolete style, by men of letters who had played no prominent part in the Commonwealth,[4] cannot pretend to the vigor and the freshness that we admire so much in the writings of men like the Villani, Gino ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... that when she wishes she can overcome her appetites much better than man. But, in spite of this, the power of the sexual appetite plays an important part in the inward struggle we have just mentioned. When this appetite is absent there is no struggle, and the widow's conduct is dictated either by her own convenience, or by the instinct which naturally leads a woman to yield to the ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... me to go the other way?" thought the boy. "I didn't mind which cliff I went along, but I do now. I'm not going to be dictated to by him. I know, he wants to come with me, just by way of an excuse to leave off digging for an hour or two and chatter and babble and keep on saying things I don't want to hear, as well as question me about yesterday's fight; and I'm not going ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... humanity. I should like to write the eclogue, the poem, the romance of humanity." She has been taxed with flattering nature and human nature because her love of beauty—defined by her as the highest expression of truth—dictated her choice of subjects. An artist who paints roses paints from reality as entirely as he who paints mud. Her principle was to choose among realities those which seemed best ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... burning; blockades, and starvation; kings deposed, and thrones tumbling like tenpins; battles in which the soldiers of every nation fought, and in which tens of thousands were mowed down like ripe grain; and, over all, the Satanic figure of a little man in a gray coat, who dictated peace to the Austrian Emperor in Schoenbrunn, and carried the Pope away a prisoner ...
— He Walked Around the Horses • Henry Beam Piper
... especially did we hold power over the whole world in our capacities for fruit-growing and in our stores of breadstuffs already amassed. With proper management of our resources, the latter fact alone might have made the whole world tributary to us, and we could have dictated terms in war as ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... 1810, the date of the beginning of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, to 1826, when the American Home Missionary Society was founded.[406:2] The "catholic basis" on which they were established was dictated partly by the conscious weakness of the several sects as they drew near to undertakings formidable even to their united forces, and partly by the glow of fraternal affection, and the sense of a common spiritual life pervading the nation, with ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... handed it to her. It was from Mr. Rawson-Clew she found, a sort of recognition of the discharge of the debt, or at least a formal cancelling of it. It was carefully and conclusively worded, certainly not the unaided work of the young man who had ridden past last night. It was dictated by the other, she was sure of it; possibly even he had himself discharged the debt so as to end the matter. Her eyes blazed as she read; he would not even allow her the satisfaction of giving him the lie—and the misery of straining and pinching to do the impossible. ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... keeping his body proof against its attacks. He generally slept in chariots or in litters, making even his repose a kind of action; and in the daytime he used to ride in a vehicle to the garrisons, cities and camps, with a slave by his side, one of those who were expert at taking down what was dictated on a journey, and a single soldier behind him armed with a sword. He used to travel so quick that on his first journey from Rome he reached the Rhodanus[483] in eight days. From his boyhood he was a good horseman, for he had been accustomed ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... settlement. Sir Garnet Wolseley has the reputation of being an extremely able man, and it is only fair to him to suppose that he was not the sole parent of this political monster, by which all the blood and treasure expended on the Zulu war were made of no account, but that it was partially dictated to him by authorities at home, who were anxious to gratify English opinion, and partly ignorant, partly careless of the consequences. At the same time, it is clear that he is responsible for the details of the scheme, since immediately after the capture of Cetywayo ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... by the edict of the king excluded from the Spanish possessions, or permitted a narrow field of action there; the policy of the colonies in matters of trade, relations with the natives, religion, and finance was dictated by the king. Upon the advice of his Council of the Indies he issued a continuous series of rules and ordinances, and finally drew up for the American possessions ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... movements;" what are the others going to do?' The situation was made worse by the action of the National Executive Committee which told every Socialist to read the St. Louis platform and then act as his conscience dictated. Fine business for a revolutionary mass movement seeking to establish the co-operative commonwealth. No ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... of carnal pleasure in the Orlando Furioso, is the counterpart of Homer's Circe. "She enjoyed her lovers for a time, and then changed them into trees, stones, fountains, or beasts, as her fancy dictated." (See Ariosto, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... be very eager to secure an interest I shall soon have need for all my fortitude, as I am on the point of separation from my own daughter. The long illness of her dear father prevented my paying her that attention which duty and affection equally dictated, and I have too much reason to fear that the governess to whose care I consigned her was unequal to the charge. I have therefore resolved on placing her at one of the best private schools in town, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... work is his work, and it can not properly be taken out of his hands. All this legislation proceeds upon the contrary assumption that the people of each of these States shall have no constitution except such as may be arbitrarily dictated by Congress and formed under the restraint of military rule. A plain statement of facts makes ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... of the community. In some large and enterprising houses a scribe copied only a fragment of a book. Several brethren worked upon the same book at once, each beginning upon a skin at the point where another scribe was to leave off.[2] Or the book to be transcribed was dictated to the scribes, as at Tours under Alcuin. Both methods had the advantage of "publishing" a book quickly, but the work was as mechanical as is that of the compositor to-day. Under Abbot Trithemius of Sponheim, subdivision of labour was carried to its extreme limit. One monk cut the parchment, ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... study, to write under his dictation. I don't complain of this; it flatters my pride to feel that I am helping so great a man. At the same time, I do notice that here again Eunice's little defects have relieved her of another responsibility. She can neither keep dictated words in her memory, nor has she ever been able to learn how to put in ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... though not very definite, is of interest in this connection, was obtained by the late A. M. Stephen, for many years a resident near the Tusayan villages in Arizona, who, aside from his competence for that work, had every facility for obtaining data of this kind. The tradition was dictated by Anawita, chief of the Pat-ki-nym (Water house gentes) ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... his face flushed with anger. The King of Scotland's demands were very urgent, and moreover they were stated in no uncertain language, and as he considered that he was a much more powerful monarch than King Alexander, he did not like to be dictated to. ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... little seen inside it. I myself did not set eyes on him for two days after my first sight of him; but after that I beheld him fairly often, and the more I saw him the more I wondered. Of a truth his retiring behaviour was dictated by no want of assurance nor by undue modesty; he was not abashed in the presence of the great and bore himself as composedly before the King as in the presence of a lackey. It was plain, too, that he enjoyed Madame's confidence in no common ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... the little squat houses and the tall lean ones that loafed together into the fog round the first bend, they were once agreeably pink and yellow, with the magenta cornice, the blue capital, that fancy dictated. There where the way narrowed with an out-jutting balcony high up, and the fog thickened and the lights grew vague, the multitude of heads passed into the blur beyond with an effect of mystery, pictorial, remote; but where Arnold and Lindsay walked the squalor was warm, human, practical. A torch ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... adopted pursuit, is inconsistent with the permanent and healthful character of a race. It made Rome great; but it left her people, as a race, so physically exhausted that the weakest tribes of the North dictated to her the terms of her degradation. The physical character of a nation moulds its intellectual nature, and shapes its destinies. The study of health is therefore the great study, and it will be found in all things accordant with those loftier truths taught by the Great ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... change in the course of ages? Was the world anciently in a more or less perfect state than it is now? was it less or more fitted for the habitation of the human race? and are the changes which it is now undergoing favorable to that race or not? The present conformation of the earth appears dictated, as has been shown in the preceding chapters, by supreme wisdom and kindness. And yet its former state must have been different from what it is now; as its present one from that which it must assume hereafter. Is ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... successes in the Jersies, and the prospect of getting possession of Philadelphia, made the Ministry hope for a speedy termination of their dispute with us, I know war with France was nearly determined on. The insolence of apparent success dictated that Memorial, which Sir Joseph Yorke presented to their High Mightinesses, and which you have undoubtedly seen. One of a still more insolent nature was prepared and even sent to Lord Stormont here, and a refusal and even delay of compliance ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... should work out its problem with as little help as possible. If the children are able to plan a barn and make it, even though it is a very crude affair, more has been accomplished than if a very cunning structure had been made after plans, dictated and closely supervised by ...
— Primary Handwork • Ella Victoria Dobbs
... village with his little company, playing the plays he chose himself. And yet, that which he would have he did not vitally want, it was only a sort of inflamed obstinacy that made him so insistent, in the masculine way. He was not going to be governed by women, he was not going to be dictated to in the least by any one. And this because he was ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... checks filled out by Jones upon which Rice's signature had been traced, and returning to Jones a substitute check with Rice's signature traced upon it. All three checks passed through the banks unsuspected. Traced signatures were also substituted for genuine ones upon letters dictated by Rice to his Texas correspondents. Thus Patrick secured the circulation of five copies of Rice's signature which, if occasion demanded, he could produce as standards of comparison to correspond with his ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... sister Clary? taking their silence for approbation of what he had dictated; you are not to receive ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... necessary for each of his columns to arrive at the desired point by a certain day; then, placing pins in the new positions, and bearing in mind the rate of marching that he must assign to each column, and the hour of its setting out, he dictated those instructions which are alone enough to make any ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... frequently between them, till they came to be like "Angels' visits," few and far between. My mother was equally pleased and surprised, a few weeks after I returned home, by receiving a kind letter from her brother Nathan. Like all his letters it contained but few words, but they were dictated by a kind heart. The most important words (to me) which the letter contained were these: "Your boy Walter needs more schooling before he goes out into the world, send him to me and he shall have it. If his disposition is anything like his mother's at ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... in steel, that pale face and blanched lips, the inertness of her movements, all told their own tragic tale. And yet that letter I had read, dictated in secret most probably because her hands were not free, was certainly not the outpourings of a madwoman. She had spoken of death, it was true, yet was it not to be supposed that she was slowly being driven ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... fellow with me I returned to the now nearly empty auction room and there gathered all my men about me. Each in his notebook took down particulars of the cabman and his passenger from the lips of my incompetent spy; next I dictated a full description of the two Americans, then scattered my men to the various railway stations of the lines leading out of Paris, with orders to make inquiries of the police on duty there, and to arrest one or more of the four persons described ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... constructing a battery under the enemy's fire, had occasion to prepare a despatch, and called out for some one who could use a pen. A young sergeant, named Junot, leapt out, and, leaning on the breastwork, wrote as he dictated. As he finished, a shot struck the ground by his side, scattering dust in abundance over him and everything near him. "Good," said the soldier, laughing, "this time we shall spare our sand." The cool gaiety of this pleased Buonaparte; he kept his ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... to not only before they understand what is said to them, but before they can repeat the sounds they hear. Their organs, still benumbed, adapt themselves only by degrees to imitating the sounds dictated to them, and it is not even certain that these sounds are borne to their ears at first ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... interpreter was employed, he translated the words used by an Indian in his oral paraphrase of the signs, and was not relied upon to explain the signs according to his own ideas. Such translations and a description of minute and rapidly-executed signs, dictated at the moment of their exhibition, were sometimes taken down by a phonographer, that there might be no lapse of memory in any particular, and in many cases the signs were made in successive motions before the camera, and ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... somehow or another, he never got above an hour to himself. He was often momentarily petulant on these occasions, and soon saw through the designs of his enemies; but he so heartily and tenderly loved them—so thoroughly appreciated the affection which dictated their little manoeuvres—that he soon surrendered at discretion, and, in fact, placed himself almost entirely at their mercy; resolving to make up for lost time on his return to town, and earnestly hoping that the interests of the ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... his behalf, he met with at Manchester, Derby, Nottingham, and every other place he visited; and the result of his tour was that he returned with nearly a thousand names on the subscription list of the Watchman, together with "something more than a half conviction that prudence dictated the abandonment of the scheme." Nothing but this, however, was needed to induce him to persevere with it. To know that a given course of conduct was the dictate of prudence was a sort of presumptive proof ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... night) well. Indeed, his mind had never worked more clearly than in this swift dim underworld. His mantle, the cords of it having come untied, had drifted off him, leaving his arms free. With breath well-pent, he steadily swam, scarcely less amused than annoyed that the gods had, after all, dictated the exact time at ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... Dr. Cabot, "that every prayer offered in the name of Jesus is sure to have its answer. Every such prayer is dictated by the Holy Spirit, and therefore finds acceptance with God; and if your cry for mercy on poor Susan's soul did not prevail with Him in her behalf, as we may hope it did, then He has answered it in ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... prestige of England and to have underestimated the might which freedom would impart to the French people. After Napoleon's great campaign of 1796-97, Pitt seeks peace, which the French Directory feels able to decline. In 1802 the Peace of Amiens is actually concluded, upon terms dictated by France. Had we been still in France's friendship, the two republics might have compelled England's abandonment of that course which evoked the war of 1812. As it was, ignored by England, to whom, as detailed below, we cringed in consenting to Jay's treaty, we were left to encounter ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... is in so fast," cried the lad impatiently, and he pulled with all his might, his anger gathering at being dictated ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... manner a wiser head than that which dictated the telegraphic instructions to the department commander that night, would have seen that it was far better for all parties in the mix at San Francisco if Mr. Loring had been detained there long enough to have the matter investigated from start to finish, and so to ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... typewritten upon her cousin's letter-head; but it was not dictated by Mr. Adair MacKenzie. Instead, it was from Mr. MacKenzie's secretary, who stated that her employer had gone to Mexico on business that might detain him ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... meteorological and geographical influences, though of such origin as has been described, were already distributed upon it. A condition of ethnical equilibrium had been reached. Along each isothermal or climatic band were its correspondingly modified men, spending their lives in avocations dictated by their environment. These strands of population were destined to be dislocated, and some of them to become extinct, by inventing or originating among themselves new ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... he regained strength to battle against Parisian superficiality, which even in the sacred sphere of art seemed to seek only for outward success and to admire whatever fashion dictated. His criticisms on the condition of life and art in Paris are very severe. Even the noble Berlioz does not escape censure from the artist's stand-point, while Liszt, who resided there at the time, he had not yet learned to appreciate. But again the saving genius of his art, German music, ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... the nature and experience of things dictated to me, upon just reflection, that all the good things of this world are no farther good to us than they are for our use; and that, whatever we may heap up to give others, we enjoy just as much as we can use, and no more. The most covetous, griping miser in the world would have ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... to the evils arising from the prevalence of modes of action in the representative body, dictated by sinister interests (to employ the useful phrase introduced by Bentham), that is, interests conflicting more or less with the ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... the fact): it had lost, for proof, more territory than any other power in the world except England, and yet, like England, cherished the curious conviction that it had won all the really important battles and dictated each peace upon its own terms. Having been wholesomely driven out of France in the fifteenth century, it had captured and carried away with it as trophy the order of the White Feather, with its proud motto, "J'y suis, j'y reste." In ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... certain that they were right in this opinion as they were that God Himself existed, that they should speak what they felt was only natural and necessary; and their language at the outset is, all which would be dictated by the tenderest sympathy. Eliphaz opens, the oldest and most important of the three, in a soft, subdued, suggestive strain, contriving in every way to spare the feelings of the sufferer, to the extreme to which his love will allow him. All is general, impersonal, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... that the course pursued towards me was dictated by His Imperial Majesty, it would be impossible for me to remain an hour longer in his service, and I should feel it my duty, at the earliest possible moment, to lay my commission at his feet. If I have not done so before—from the treatment which, in common with the navy, ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... secretary and dictated a statement concerning the arrival of Prince Koltsoff, who he was, and a list of several of the entertainments given in ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... Hartley, sitting up, with a sudden air of determination. "But then, so am I. I am not going to be dictated to in this fashion. My private affairs are nothing to do with him. I—I shall ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs |
